


The only way is up again

by becka



Category: BBC Radio 1 RPF, One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Break Up, Embarrassment, M/M, Moving On, Record Shops, moping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-02
Updated: 2015-07-02
Packaged: 2018-04-07 06:55:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,275
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4253679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/becka/pseuds/becka
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Record shop owner Louis is dumped by his long-time boyfriend and wonders if he should resign himself to tedium and dying alone. But there are plenty of people record shop employee Niall can call on to help get Louis back on his feet, including a fit Radio 1 DJ. A (significantly altered) <i>High Fidelity</i> AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The only way is up again

**Author's Note:**

  * For [reachthetree](https://archiveofourown.org/users/reachthetree/gifts).



> For anniepanic, who asked for a _High Fidelity_ Tomlinshaw AU. _High Fidelity_ was one of my favourite books as a teenager, and I really hope you like this.  <3
> 
> Thanks to L for the beta and playlist help. Title from Clean Bandit.
> 
> NB: None of this is real, and I messed with the fabric of time some to make it all work.

_Top five most embarrassing moments in Louis Tomlinson's life (in chronological order):_

_1\. In primary school, he had one of those classic, almost cinematic experiences that define the youth of bullied children everywhere. He wet himself during a lesson after he asked to go to the toilet and was denied. Granted, he'd already been to the toilet once that day, and likely everyone knew he'd used that time to clog one of the loos with toilet roll just to see if it would overflow or explode (it hadn't, to his grave disappointment). But the second time he genuinely had to go, and eventually it rolled through him in an inexorable wave, and he thought perhaps he could just go a little to relieve the pressure before the end of the day. He hadn't yet heard the expression "breaking the seal", and he wouldn't hear it until uni, but he learned that day that it was something one must never ever do._

_Once he started weeing, he couldn't stop, and it soaked down his trouser legs and pattered to the floor. Louis clenched his jaw to keep from crying because he had no intention of making all this worse for himself, but he could feel the eyes of the other kids turning towards him as he stared resolutely at his book. The teacher had been kind to him, he remembers, kinder than she would be ever be otherwise, but Louis's reputation with the rest of the class was trashed in seconds._

_2\. The year Louis finished school, he auditioned for X Factor. He tells no one this now that he owns a record shop and has some amount of indie credibility, not even in the small talk, what's-an-interesting-fact-about-you way. He made it as far as the bootcamp stage, and he genuinely can't remember how that happened, who let him through, or whether he'd honestly done a good enough job to be worth the airtime. But he’d got booted off before judges’ houses, before the show gave him any sort of identity. He watched it back anyway, with his proud, pointing family, but generally the whole thing feels like a quietly shameful blur._

_3\. After moving to London at twenty-one with vague intentions to do something in the music industry, Louis had a lot of weird little jobs that didn’t pay much: handing out flyers for club nights, day work as a film production assistant making coffee, even a couple of days as an extra on _Eastenders_. He brushed along the very edges of the entertainment industry before landing a proper gig at the record shop, and his greatest skill was blagging his way into parties full of famous people who mostly didn’t speak to him. At one such, Louis struck up a conversation with a fit bloke called Nick who worked at Radio 1 and looked vaguely familiar. After a couple of minutes of chatting about bands and trying to decide if they were flirting, he realised that he'd seen Nick Grimshaw in pap photos from Amy Winehouse's funeral over the summer, that he was one of the stoic friends in dark suits and sunglasses. He'd genuinely cried when he realised a third album was never coming out, and told everyone who’d listen that Amy’s death was the most significant musician death since Cobain. And now he was in the presence of someone who actually knew her, and he'd had enough to drink that he let desperate curiosity get the best of him._

_“You knew Amy Winehouse, didn’t you?” he said abruptly. “What was she like?”_

_Nick’s affable smile disappeared and his eyes went flat. “Funny and clever and lovely,” he said. “Listen, it’s been great chatting, but I’ve got to go. See you around.”_

_Louis had never been so thoroughly brushed off in his life, and he went fully red and stuttered something probably stupid as Nick walked away._

_4\. About six months after Louis bought the shop, he dropped a metal shelf on his head while wobbling on his toes, trying to set up a display of memorabilia. He came to on the floor behind the counter a moment later with his scalp bleeding and a customer standing over him, asking if he needed a ride to A &E. He'd been so grateful and embarrassed that he hired Niall on the spot so he wouldn't have to close the shop if something like that happened again. Niall brought in a stepladder on his first day of work, and Louis hadn’t even had the heart to be offended._

_5\. Yesterday, when Louis came home from the shop carrying a bottle of wine and a DVD, ready for a romantic night in, he found Zayn packing up his things. He stood mortified in the doorway of their bedroom, and he couldn’t help but be amazed at the speed with which Zayn was leaving him. Already all his books were in boxes, the shelves gaping emptily with only Louis’s things on them._

_Zayn looked up guiltily, as though somehow he’d expected to get away with this, with just slipping out as though he’d never lived in the flat at all._

_“What’s all this then?” Louis asked, trying to sound venomous and cheerful at once because they both fucking knew, didn’t they? But his voice wavered a bit and he thought he might cry in one more breath._

_“I just need some space,” said Zayn calmly. “I just need to, like, figure out my life, and not be with anyone for awhile. I told you.”_

_The “I told you” was the worst part, the most humiliating part, the part that if Louis ever got to the point of recounting this story whilst drunk he’d probably omit. Zayn had said all the figuring out his life stuff before, loads, mostly when they were stoned, but Louis had never heard the not being with anyone bit, maybe because Zayn hadn’t said it, or because Louis wasn’t ready to hear it. So he stood there like a lump while his boyfriend packed his things, tucking them into a box as though his bloody comic book figurines were what mattered._

_Louis wanted something witty to say, something cutting, but his brain wouldn’t supply anything but “please don’t go” and “I’ll make things different” which were both useless and pathetic in the circumstances. He stood in the doorway and watched Zayn pack until Zayn asked him who the giant book about the history of Marvel comics belonged to, and then he decided to get out of the way. He couldn’t imagine discussing practical things like whose books were whose when Zayn was about to walk out of his life forever._

_“I’ll be in the lounge,” he said, turning away from Zayn sat on the floor in a jumble of their things. Because everything in the flat was theirs, wasn’t it? They’d picked all this out and acted as though it was some kind of lasting thing, with both their names on the lease. He wasn’t sure what he’d do if Zayn wanted to take some of the records._

With Zayn and half his clothes gone in the morning, Louis stares at the ceiling and realises he’ll have to dip into his savings to afford the flat now, even with just its one cramped bedroom. He wants to skip work and lie in bed feeling sorry for himself, but he can’t do that. It’s his shop and there’s no dull, uncaring boss to fake lurgy to. So he shrugs into his oldest, softest t-shirt, one that predates Zayn altogether, and tugs on his jeans from the day before. He’s tried to cultivate a coolly unkempt look as an independent record shop owner, but when he catches himself in the bathroom mirror, he realises he’s gone straight through to hobo today. He musses his damp hair further and decides he doesn’t care. Zayn’s sunglasses are sat on the table by the door, and Louis hopes bitterly that today is the sunniest day in London’s history and Zayn goes blind from it.

Louis arrives at the shop five minutes before the opening time posted on the door, and he spends those minutes making tea and waffling between choosing epically sad songs to play on the shop stereo and ones that will effectively disguise his feelings. He still hasn’t made a decision when Niall strolls in at two minutes past, whistling a top 40 hit that Louis should probably tell him off for. Niall’s taste in music ranges from boy bands to classic rock, but it skates through more obscure territory as well because there’s nothing Niall seems to like better than getting invited to gigs of bands he’s never heard of. And he seems to know just about everyone in London to make this happen for him. Perhaps that’s also how he gets by on a nearly-minimum wage job that he only got because he took Louis to A&E when he concussed himself.

“Must you?” asks Louis, and Niall grins and starts singing the song aloud.

“Take a sip of my secret potion, I'll make you fall in love,” Niall croons, holding up a biro like a mic and stretching an arm out towards Louis. “For a spell that can't be broken, one drop should be enough.”

Louis starts to feel genuinely annoyed. He doesn’t need a fucking girl group telling him all he needs to get a man is a little bit of magic. “It’s Monday, Niall. Surely it’s too early in the week to be this cheerful.”

Niall leans over the counter to smack a kiss on his cheek. “You got something else in mind, Lou? Some sad bastard music to enlighten us all?”

Louis tucks the new Foals album into the CD player and turns it up loud. Niall can’t call that sad bastard music, but there’s enough snarl to the guitar to briefly soothe Louis’s bad mood. He thinks of telling Niall what happened, since Niall would surely cuddle him and coo sympathetically, but the task of bringing it up, describing it, feels impossible, and a small, delusional part of Louis hopes Zayn will back and ready to apologise by the time Louis arrives home. It’s only been sixteen hours; surely he’s had a chance to reconsider. Louis hadn’t even asked where he was going to stay. He can’t have been planning to drive back to Bradford at eight on a Sunday night. Louis thinks about phoning, but he won’t do that either.

The shop has relatively few walk-in customers, and nearly all the profit comes from online sales, but Louis would kill for a pack of spotty teenagers browsing the “Metal” section and whining over Louis’s lack of sub-genre breakdown.

He and Niall start on a new round of Desert Island Discs after lunch, but as usual they stall when Niall wants to count the Eagles’ _Greatest Hits_ as a single album and Louis calls off the game. He envisions ways to reorganise his record collection when he gets home, something arcane that will ensure Zayn never finds what he’s looking for, even if he does come crawling back.

What Louis does when he goes home though is get drunk off the unopened wine from the night before and an ancient bottle of apricot brandy that may have been a housewarming gift from his nan, but he can’t remember. When he drags himself into work in sunglasses and track bottoms the next day, Niall makes him admit that something’s wrong, and then what it is, and then he offers to make Louis a mix and take him out for a pint like a true friend.

*

_Niall’s Cure for Heartbreak_   
_1\. The Everly Brothers – Love Hurts_   
_2\. Gavin James – Remember Me_   
_3\. McFly – Bubble Wrap_   
_4\. Kate Nash – Merry Happy_   
_5\. Fall Out Boy – Hum Hallelujah_   
_6\. Carly Rae Jepsen ft. Nicki Minaj – Tonight I’m Getting Over You (Remix)_   
_7\. Kylie Minogue – Break This Heartbreak_   
_8\. Clean Bandit ft. Rae Morris – Up Again_   
_9\. Ben Howard – Keep Your Head Up_   
_10\. Kodaline – Moving On_   
_11\. Bob Dylan – Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright_   
_12\. Amy Winehouse – Tears Dry On Their Own_

 

*

Zayn’s been out of the flat for over a month, and all his things have been gone for a fortnight before Louis starts to regain his equilibrium. He’d picked up a load of rare singles at an estate sale for far less than they’re worth, and the eBay crowd are eating them up, which has kept Louis in rent money for the time being, and Niall’s been feeding him a steady diet of liquor and rubbishing all romantic relationships. Louis is still avoiding the entire R&B section as though one of the ballads Zayn used to sing to him will leap from the racks and maul him, and he still feels miserably certain he’ll die alone and unloved, but it’s bearable most of the time.

It’s Saturday, which always brings in a larger share of first-time customers and window-shoppers spilling out of the organic bakery next door, so when a sporty bloke with a David Beckham haircut wanders in, Louis doesn’t give him more than a nod before going back to his _NME_. A few minutes later he hears Niall’s laugh though, the big, full-bodied one, and he looks up to find Niall leaning on the New Releases rack, grinning at something sporty bloke is saying.

“Friend of yours?” Louis says, when the man has paid for his Rudimental album and left.

Niall winks at him. “Could be.”

“Do you think he even knows how to use a record player? Or was he just buying an album to impress his girlfriend?”

“Dunno.” Niall tilts his head like he’s considering this. “Do you think it’s legal to own a record shop and not be a judgmental cunt?”

“Definitely not,” says Louis blandly. “I’d be arrested on the spot.”

“I asked him if he wanted to go to the Clean Bandit gig on Friday. Is that alright?”

“Do you think it’s his sort of thing? Because if it’s his sort of thing it might not be my sort of thing.”

Niall rolls his eyes. “You like Rudimental fine. And that Clean Bandit song I put on your mix. And Liam likes dance music, so I thought he’d like to come along.”

Louis gives him a long, hard look and goes to tidy the stockroom. He’s never really known Niall to date (although it’s no secret that he goes home with Harry from the organic café sometimes), but he’s clearly interested in this Liam. And it makes Louis’s broken heart feel freshly wounded. How dare Niall be on the pull when Louis’s a pathetic mess?

*

The Clean Bandit gig is at Barfly in Camden, and even the smell of the place as they walk in—Niall and Liam with Louis a step behind—brings memories surging back. Before Mr. Walsh retired and sold him the shop, Louis had just been sales help, with none of the worries of the small business owner. That left him plenty of time to cultivate a following as a DJ here. With an entire record shop at his disposal in addition to his own music collection, he could skate smoothly from classic hip-hop to house to ‘90s pop-punk in the course of an evening, and he loved the way the movement of the crowd changed as he mixed one song into the next. 

By the time Louis met Zayn, he had his own night twice a month, “No Control” on the first and third Thursdays, and he wondered if he could genuinely have a career as a DJ. They spent the early days of their relationship sat on Zayn’s bedroom floor sharing music they loved. Zayn taught Louis about grime and bhangra, and Louis introduced Zayn to the singer-songwriters of the ‘70s who were the soundtrack to his childhood. They ate a lot of Chinese takeaway and had sex to Cat Stevens and saved up for a future neither of them could see clearly. But when Louis was offered the chance to buy the shop, he had to take it, even though he couldn’t see his late-night DJ gigs fitting in with it. The shop meant stability, and deep down, Louis was afraid of never having that.

Louis hasn’t been to Barfly in at least a year, and he can’t remember the last time he was here without Zayn. He chats to one of the bartenders and watches Niall and Liam smile at each other, goofily happy the way Louis once was. Louis wants to ruin it for them because all love is a lie, but he keeps his distance instead. By the time the band comes on, Louis’s had several beers, and his bitterness is deadened enough that when they play the song Niall put on his mix, he immediately starts crying.

_I've given up again, maybe I'm just tired_   
_Of thinking that there was one way, only one way out_   
_I was hoping by now, that maybe I'd have found_   
_Answers to the questions that are keeping me down_

He mouths the words as he dashes at the tears in his eyes with the back of his wrist, and during the second verse, he finds himself making eye contact with Clean Bandit’s gorgeous violinist. It’s not his best look, or his best moment, but the man winks at him, and Louis gives a flustered little smile in return.

When the show’s over, it turns out Liam knows one of the singers, and Louis trails along to be introduced to the band as though they haven’t seen him crying like an idiot. Neil the violinist smiles at him, but he tunes out the actual conversation a bit until Niall says, “And Louis used to DJ here,” and he’s abruptly sucked back in.

“Are you a DJ?” asks Grace, the cellist. “What sort of thing do you play?”

“Bit of this and that,” replies Louis. “Not much classical though, unfortunately.”

“It can be hard to rave to,” Neil agrees. “But maybe you can play us now.”

“I don’t actually DJ anymore,” Louis tells him.

“Why not?” asks Grace.

Louis doesn’t have a good answer to that question, honestly. “Got another gig.”

“He owns a record shop,” Liam pipes up. “It’s brilliant. They’ve got everything.”

“We love a record shop,” says Neil. “There’s so little browsing in the modern world. It’s nice to be surprised sometimes, find something you don’t expect. Like a treasure hunt.”

This is so close to Louis’s own feeling on the subject that it’s a little bit of a turn-on, but he doesn’t say.

“You should come by,” says Niall, and he produces a business card for the shop and hands it to Neil. Louis doesn’t even carry business cards for the shop.

Louis is still preoccupied wondering whether he should carry business cards when someone else walks up beside him.

“Grimmy!” Neil exclaims, and Louis looks up to find Nick Grimshaw at his elbow. 

He takes an instinctive step away. He hasn’t seen Nick since that ill-fated party four years ago, and he’d be happy not to relive that just now. Especially not in front of a fit violinist. Louis waits a minute, offhandedly admiring at the curve of Nick’s smile and the way he uses his long-fingered hands when he talks, and then he pretends to get a phone call, wandering away with a wave like he might come back. But as soon as he gets outside, he heads straight for the bus stop. Better to leave and seem mysterious than stay and risk Nick Grimshaw remembering what an insensitive twat he is.

*

Neil comes into the shop the following week, and while he’s browsing through the rack of Pop Standards, Niall beckons Louis to the stockroom door and says, “Ask him out. You’re young and you’re hot, and I saw you nearly cream yourself when he said he liked record shops.”

Louis glares at him, but he works up the nerve to point out to Neil that it’s nearly one and maybe they could grab lunch. And when Neil agrees, Louis’s confidence soars. He talks about music, which is what he’s really good at, and he feels clever and interesting describing bands he’s heard recently. That is until he mentions a group called Years and Years, whom Niall has been playing in the shop since Louis banned all songs about happy relationships.

Neil’s smile goes blinding. “That’s my boyfriend’s band,” he says, and Louis bites back a scream. Is everyone in the fucking world part of a couple now?

“Boyfriend?” Louis replies dumbly.

“Yeah,” says Neil. “He’s on tour at the moment, so I’m a bit at loose ends, socially.”

“Socially,” Louis repeats, trying to find an original thought in his brain. “But not romantically, to be clear.”

Neil looks surprised and then abashed, and Louis starts to think this moment may knock the time he dropped a shelf on his head out of his top five most embarrassing. “I’m sorry. I didn’t even consider that you might think…”

Louis gives an acid little smile. “Yeah, you are a bit out of my league.”

Neil shakes his head. “No, I didn’t mean that. Sorry, I’m making an absolute mess here. You’re lovely. But I’m with someone else.”

Louis laughs it off as best he can, but he gets back to the shop in an absolutely foul mood. Niall has used his absence as an excuse to put on a nauseatingly sunshine-y ‘80s mix, and Louis turns it off and flings the CD into a corner.

“He has a boyfriend,” Louis says into the silence. “Everyone has a fucking boyfriend except for me.”

“Shit, Lou, I’m sorry.” Niall hovers at arm’s length, as though he’s not sure if he wants to try for a hug or if Louis will throttle him. Louis’s honestly not sure either. “I never would have encouraged you, if I’d known. Obviously.”

Louis folds his arms across his chest. He’s deflating rapidly, hurt and sad instead of angry. Zayn’s moved on and not even looked back, and Louis’s sure he’s got someone new by now, someone with a whole new circle of friends and interests; and Louis’s still just here, in his shop with his dusty records and his one employee, blundering his way through even basic social interactions. “It’s just fucking hopeless. _I’m_ just fucking hopeless.”

Niall does hug him then, tucking Louis’s head into the curve of his neck and rubbing his back. “You’re not at all. You’re brilliant. And you’ll find someone who sees that. Someone single.”

Louis clenches his jaw in an effort not to cry. “I gave up on the only interesting thing I ever did to buy this bloody place, and now I’m just boring. Who’s going to want me like this?”

“Loads of people. You’re not boring. Anyone would be lucky to have you.” Niall pauses, the sort of pause Louis can feel in his whole body. “But if you miss DJing, you can do that again as well. We could get you some gigs. I know people, and…”

“Stop.” Louis cuts him off, nearly flinging himself backwards. “I don’t want a fucking pity gig. I don’t want, like, you and your meathead boyfriend and a dozen of your friends to dance about whilst I pretend to mix. I just.” Louis sighs. “I just miss it some. I miss people coming up and saying, What was that song? None of the stuck-up arseholes who come in here will ever admit to not knowing anything.”

Niall laughs. “You’re not wrong about that. But it wouldn’t be a pity gig. It would be a great fucking comeback bash.”

Louis shakes his head.

*

_DJ Tommo’s top five guilty pleasure bangers that never fail to get the crowd singing (a countdown):_   
_5\. Steps – Tragedy_   
_4\. House of Pain – Jump Around_   
_3\. Spice Girls - Wannabe_   
_2\. Miley Cyrus – Party in the USA_   
_1\. Chumbawumba – Tubthumping_

 

*

It’s a month later when Louis sees the flyer in the window of the café next to the shop. Neon pink and printed with the words, “The Return of DJ Tommo and No Control”, the name of a club, and a date of the following Friday. Louis just stares it for a moment, like it might be a hallucination. He’s angry, because no one’s asked his permission, no one’s wondered if maybe he’s got plans for a random Friday in October. But he’s also a bit exhilarated; there’s so much more great music in the world than there was the last time he DJed.

He goes through the normal routine of opening the shop, but in his head he’s making lists of tracks to include in his set, wondering whether Lady Gaga is vintage now or whether he should pair her up with something even older. By the time Niall strolls in, there’s no heat in Louis’s “Something to tell me, Niall?”

Niall grins and thumps his bag down on the counter. Even more of the pink flyers are poking out. He must have had hundreds of them made. “Just arranging a little party for a Friday night. Got a decent DJ coming down.”

“And you’re paying him handsomely, I’m sure.”

“Twenty percent of the door, if he wants it.”

Louis allows himself to smile back. “Reckon he’d accept that.”

*

On the night of DJ Tommo’s comeback, Louis is bricking it. It’s only eight, but they’re stood in the middle of an empty dancefloor, waiting for a mate of Niall’s to show up with a proper set of decks. Louis keeps pacing back and forth between the DJ booth and the bar, his laptop bag bouncing against his hip. Niall and Liam are just watching him uneasily, like he’s liable to explode, occasionally saying something comforting that Louis ignores. He’s not ready for the fact that Niall’s mate with the decks is Nick Grimshaw.

Louis goes still and stupid as Nick and Niall chat, manages to smile faintly when Nick says hi. Louis watches Nick hook up his decks (“Usually you wouldn’t have to bring your own equipment like this, I show up to uni gigs with a USB stick in my pocket”) and listens carefully to his instructions how to use them.

“I’ll hang around if you like,” Nick says. “If I wouldn’t be in the way.”

Louis looks up from his laptop screen. He wants to wave Nick off, but he’s still pretty foggy on all the controls in front of him, and it’s Nick’s stuff, so he’s got a right to make sure Louis doesn’t ruin it. “Yeah, mate. You’ve got a lot more experience with this sort of thing than I have.”

“You’re getting the practice in now though. Have you got your setlist ready?” Louis does, but he goes shy with Nick looking at his laptop, nodding at his choices, laughing occasionally, but in a nice way. “You don’t want them to take themselves too seriously, do you?” he asks. “Give them a bit of ravey-ravey dubstep and then go straight back to the greatest hits of 1992. I always think Skrillex and Paula Abdul should collaborate.”

“Can’t believe they haven’t thought of it themselves, really,” Louis agrees.

Nick turns the full force of his grin on Louis, and Louis ducks his head to smile back. He listens to Nick on the radio in the mornings sometimes, although he’s often not awake by ten, and he’s heard the kind of easy friendliness Nick has his guests. He wishes he hadn’t cocked up his own first impression so badly.

Around half-ten people start arriving: Niall’s various Irish ex-pat mates, Neil and his boyfriend, a gaggle of gorgeous women he realises are Nick’s friends when Nick runs out to meet them. And then strangers, a growing stream of people he doesn’t recognise at all. He’s got about three hours worth of music queued up and more at his fingertips, and as the night goes on, he starts to forget the new decks and feel the rhythm of each song bending into the next. Niall comes up to stand in front of the booth when Louis plays “Don’t Stop Believing” and croons the entire thing to him. Louis’s missed this so much, the sway of a crowd in the dark, the way a song can hit someone and make them forget everything else for three minutes. Sometimes Louis notices Nick standing beside him, but he doesn’t mind, doesn’t have to ask if he’s doing it right. He knows he is.

The crowd starts to thin after one, and Louis can see Niall and Liam snogging in a corner, Niall’s hands clutching tightly at the back of Liam’s jumper. He picks out a Beyoncé song to set the mood, even though they clearly don’t need it, and it’s only when it hits the chorus that he remembers Zayn singing it to him, sliding into his lap and crooning into his ear as he worked on the shop’s accounts. It hurts a little, but it’s bearable, and that’s a change from the last couple of months. Nick hands him a beer, and their fingers brush. Louis nods his thanks.

It’s not until the lights come up at two that Louis notices he’s pouring sweat and his back aches from hunching over the laptop. Niall comes up to hug him, Liam behind him assuring Louis he was brilliant. “Let’s do this again sometime,” Niall says, smacking a kiss on Louis’s cheek as he pulls away.

“I’ll consider it,” says Louis, stepping back and shoving his hands in his pockets. “Why don’t you two lads get home? Young Niall’s got work in the morning.” They’ve both got to be back at the shop in less than nine hours, but Louis’s too wired to consider going home to bed yet.

Once Niall and Liam go, it’s just him and Nick and the dour, sleepy club manager looking on. Nick’s packing up, and Louis helps him locate all his cables and things, says “Thank you” quite a few times in between the rest of the small talk. 

“No trouble,” says Nick, squeezing Louis’s shoulder. “You were a lot of fun to watch.” Nick’s eyes catch his, and his smile isn’t subtle. Louis can’t remember if this is what being flirted with feels like, and Nick’s caught him at such a vulnerable moment anyway.

“Cheers,” says Louis. “It was brilliant. Do you need help getting all this to your car? If you have a car?”

“Thanks,” says Nick. “Car’s just round the corner. Do you need a lift anywhere?”

“Where are you headed?”

“Just home. Bed.” Nick hesitates. “You could come along there if you like. It’s not far.”

It’s such a gentle yet pointed proposition that Louis is startled into practicalities. “I’ve got to be at work at half-ten.”

“I could get you there. If you wanted to stay over.”

Louis hasn’t had an offer like this in so long he isn’t quite sure how to react. There’s a part of him that wants to say, _Look, mate, I’ve just been dumped and I don’t really remember how to do sex with anyone I haven’t been with for four years. Sorry._ But the rest of him is still vibrating with adrenalin, and Nick is well fit and may get him past two of his most embarrassing moments in one night. As long as he doesn’t bubble over with feelings about dead popstars again. “Yeah. I’d like that.”

Nick’s car is a posh little Mercedes that makes Louis feel grubby and underdressed, but Nick doesn’t seem to notice or mind. He puts on the radio and asks if they should stop for a McDonalds on the way. “I’m always ravenous when I finish DJing. I figure it burns a few thousand calories, being stood up there like that in front of all those dancing lunatics.”

“Do you get a burger as well for carrying the equipment?”

Nick grins. “Abso-bloody-lutely.”

Nick pays for Louis’s burger and chips, and Louis starts to feel a bit weird about the whole thing, like this is turning into a date instead of just going home with someone he intends to sleep with. “I feel like I should apologise for the first time we met,” Louis says, folding the top the McDonalds bag in his lap. “I was a proper dick.”

“Oh god, you weren’t even. We’ve all faked a phone call to get out of socializing sometime. That’s just life.”

Louis wrinkles his nose; he hadn’t thought Nick picked up on that. “I don’t mean then. We met at a party a few years ago, not long after Amy Winehouse died, and I blundered into asking you about her because I’d seen you in photos of the funeral. And it was a shitty, insensitive thing to do.”

Nick gives a little shrug, his mouth twisting into a sad smile. “You and everyone else, love. I’m never so popular as when one of my friends dies.”

“I just thought she was brilliant. I didn’t think what it would sound like, so I put my foot in it. And I’m sorry for your loss.”

Nick squeezes his knee. “Thanks. Sorry for not remembering the first time we met.”

Louis folds his arms across his chest. “Can’t blame you for that, honestly.”

“Hitting the post-gig comedown, are you? It’s always like that. Your ears have stopped ringing and self-doubt creeps in.”

Louis bristles. “This wasn’t my first DJ gig, you know. I have done this before.” God, he can’t even sit through a car journey without picking a fight. How did anyone date him?

Nick pulls into a quiet residential street full of tall, whitewashed houses, parks, and turns off the car. “Of course you have. I just know how it is, when you’ve had a great night, and then it’s over.”

Louis ducks his head, can’t meet the kindness in Nick’s eyes. “Is it over?”

“Well, maybe that was the wrong phrase.” He leans over to pluck the bag with the food from Louis’s lap, leaving his other hand warmly on Louis’s thigh. “I certainly don’t want it to be over.” He kisses the corner of Louis’s mouth but pulls away too quickly for Louis to react.

Louis follows him into a basement flat, and a dog appears from nowhere to sniff Louis’s shoes, her tail wagging so fast it’s barely visible.

“That’s Pig,” says Nick. “She’s very friendly.”

Louis reaches down to pat her velvety head. “Hey, Pig. Reckon you like McDonalds as well.”

“Don’t encourage her,” says Nick over his shoulder. Pig trots after him. The flat opens up at the back into a lounge and conservatory, with proper framed art on the walls instead of tour posters and worn record sleeves to cover chipped plaster. It’s hitting Louis that Nick’s not just middle class, he’s proper posh. It’s no coincidence that he pals around with popstars. Louis does a clandestine sniff of his armpits and isn’t sure he wants to sit on Nick’s artfully mismatched furniture in this state.

“Tea?” Nick asks, popping his head out of the kitchen. “Is that weird to ask at two in the morning?”

Louis’s desire for a cup of tea is sudden and desperate. “Tea would be great.”

Nick shows him a box of ridiculous herbal things, and Louis looks at them in horror until he spots regular black tea. “You’ve got milk, right? Real milk? Not just almond or alfalfa or whatever?”

Nick grins. “Only the finest quinoa milk for guests.”

“How do you milk quinoa?” Louis asks. The box of tea in Nick’s hands is keeping a foot of distance between them, and Louis wants to cross it, kiss Nick’s smiling mouth.

“Dunno. How do you milk an almond?” The kettle boils and clicks off, and Nick turns away to grab a pair of mugs. He’s drinking one of the weird floral things that hardly counts as tea, but he’s got real milk for Louis. Pig watches them from the kitchen doorway.

They eat burgers at Nick’s big dining room table, and Nick tells Louis about the time he fell out of a DJ booth and nearly strangled himself with the cord to his headphones. “Not even drunk,” says Nick, “just an idiot.”

In return, Louis tells him about the time he was DJing a wedding and the power cut out, so they had to do an impromptu sing-along while someone sorted the blown fuse. “The bride’s dad turned out to be a brilliant singer. He didn’t want to stop when we got the power back.”

“What did you sing?”

“Well, we started with ‘All You Need Is Love’, obviously, but then it was sort of a Beatles free-for-all. Apparently everyone in Britain has some Beatles song they’ve been waiting all their lives to belt out on a foot-high stage to a room full of strangers and distant family. You’ve not lived until you’ve watched someone’s great-aunt warble ‘Norwegian Wood’ into a dead microphone.” Louis and Zayn had only been together for a couple of months then, and that wedding had been the one of the first times they’d properly gone somewhere together; they had laughed themselves nearly sick in the car home and it had been one of their stories, the ones you bring out at parties to show how happy you’ve been. But it’s a good story without Zayn as well, and it’s nice to tell it to someone who laughs as easily as Nick.

They finish their burgers and bin the wrappers, and Louis holds his mug between his hands because he doesn’t know how they go from this to snogging to taking their clothes off. Then Nick touches his cheek and he startles, looking up into Nick’s face at suddenly close range. Nick kisses him gently, just to start, and Louis pushes up into it, teeters on his toes and opens his mouth for Nick’s tongue. Nick’s hand settles at his waist, steadying him.

“You might want to set the tea down, love. You wouldn’t want to spill.” He takes the mug from Louis’s hands and leaves it in the kitchen. Then there’s nothing left to do except the thing they came here for. Louis feels clammy with sweat, and every minute he’s spent out tonight is starting to catch up with him.

“I don’t mean to be a diva, but could I maybe have a shower? Before we…”

“Yeah, of course. You don’t mean you want company in the shower, right? I’m not missing a beat here?”

“Just by myself,” says Louis. “For now.”

Alone in Nick’s bathroom Louis panics a bit, staring at himself in the mirror. His hair is hanging limp across his forehead, and his eyes are wild. He hasn’t stopped to think about what he’s doing, and he isn’t sure he wants to know. He strips off and steps into Nick’s shower, fiddling with the tap until cold water pours over his head. The soaps and shampoos at the edge of the tub are even more complicated than the shower controls, and he picks one essentially at random to scrub into his hair. It may not be the intended use, but he smells better by the time he gets out, nicking a towel from a fluffy pile of them like something in a hotel. He can’t bear to put his sweaty clothes on, and he wonders if he can manage to wash and dry them before he goes to work in the morning.

Nick’s in bed in a t-shirt and boxers when Louis steps out of the bathroom, so at least the awkward undressing part is past. But he still feels shy as Nick’s eyes skate over his nearly naked body. “I should say something suave here, I reckon,” Louis says. “And then drop the towel. Can we make believe like I’ve done that?”

Nick unfolds himself from the bed and when he’s close enough to touch, he stops, makes Louis lean into him for a kiss. His fingers trace along the groove of Louis’s spine, and Louis makes a helpless sound in his throat. He hasn’t been touched in what feels like ages, and Nick surrounds him, kissing him deep and slow and tender. “You should drop the towel for real, love. I had all night to stare at your bum in jeans, and I reckon it’s even better like this.” The thought of Nick staring at him makes heat prickle all over his skin, and Louis ducks his head and lets the towel fall as Nick’s hands sweep down to grab at his arse.

Their kisses grow messier, and Nick’s long fingers seem to be everywhere, cupping Louis’s cock and stroking his hair and sneaking down the crack of his arse to prod at his hole. There’s so much of Nick to touch too, and Louis finds himself rubbing up against him like a satisfied cat, running his hands up Nick’s sides under his top, pressing soft sucking kisses along his collarbone. 

When it feels like almost too much to bear, just touching and being touched, Nick lays Louis out on the bed and sucks his cock, taking him in in long, deep strokes, eyes closed as he sinks onto the length of Louis’s dick. Louis had got used to a rhythm with Zayn, something simple and steady and easily repeatable, but with Nick it’s new all over again. He pulls away to mouth at Louis’s balls and lick behind them a little, and Louis spreads his legs wider, welcoming it. When he comes, it’s with Nick’s mouth in a tight O around the crown of his cock and one fingertip eased into his arse.

Louis flops back bonelessly against the pillow afterwards, smiles into the salty mess of Nick’s kisses, flavored with his own come. He’s languid and slow to reciprocate, with Nick folded around him, nuzzling at his mouth. But Nick’s dick is still heavy and hard against his hip, and eventually Louis gets a hand on it, letting Nick wriggle in closer to him.

“That’s good, love,” he says, setting his teeth gently to the lobe of Louis’s ear. “You feel so good.” He gets a hand round Louis’s arse again, and for a moment Louis thinks he’s planning to ask for something completely different, something Louis would be glad to give him, even spent as he is. But Nick just strokes over the curve of Louis’s bum, teasing down his crack as Louis works his cock in a spit-slick hand.

Nick comes with a groan and a kiss to the corner of Louis’s mouth, but he gets up almost immediately to clean off. Silhouetted in the bathroom door, his legs look about a mile long, and Louis takes the chance to admire him for a moment, the lean frame of his body.

“You’re staying, yeah?” Nick asks. “So I can throw your clothes in the wash now and have them done by the time you need them?”

“Yeah,” says Louis, pulling the duvet up over himself. “I’m staying. Seems like a fair end to the night, this.”

“Good.” Nick pulls on his boxers and Louis can hear him speaking to the dog in the other room, but he’s already nodding off, his eyelids drooping closed. DJing for a club full of friends and strangers and going home with Nick Grimshaw after sounds like the kind of fantasy he might have had four years ago, but the reality of it now is better. Louis feels the bed dip as Nick slides in beside him, and he wonders if he can have more nights like this, maybe a lot more.


End file.
